#11 Hakone sanchū yakō no zu (Picture of Night Travel through the Hakone Mountains), Utagawa Hiroshige

Archive Label 2003 (version 1 (?): Exhibition Label: "Inspired by Japan," Mar-2003, Cori Sherman: The Tōkaidō (Eastern Sea Route) was the main road connecting the capital of Edo (Tokyo) with Kyoto. The route was heavily traveled by messengers, pilgrims, merchants, and feudal lords. Although other artists also depicted this subject matter, Hiroshige was the artist most celebrated for depicting the 53 stations of the Tōkaidō. Hiroshige excelled at depicting the moods and seasons of the different stations. The colors lent to the mountains by the setting sun, as well as the torchbearers lighting the way, suggest the evening road of the title. Comparing these two prints of the same station at Hakone, the viewer can see how Hiroshige rearranged the forms in the composition to suit the two different formats, horizontal and vertical. It is interesting that he chose to depict the entire mountain in the horizontal format, but here in the vertical format he showed a close-up of the mountain with the travelers in palanquins. Archive Label 2003 (version 2): Hiroshige significantly influenced Western art and artists from the 1870s onwards: His shadowless drawing, mastery of telling detail, starkly geometric compositions, and overall arrangement of forms were emulated by many artists, including van Gogh, Degas, Toulouse-Lautrec, Monet, Manet, and Whistler. Ernest Fenollosa aptly dubbed Hiroshige “The artist of mist, snow, and rain.” In Hiroshige’s countless landscape series, such as his 53 Stations of the Tōkaidō of 1833-4, and the many sets of “pictures of famous places” (meishoe), he suggested diverse atmospheres by varying elements such as the wind, rain or snow, phases of the moon, time of day, or year. His figures depicted interacting with nature achieved a subtle sympathy that prompted immediate reponse in Hiroshige’s viewers, both Eastern and Western.